Computer interface technology has quickly advanced from pure text interaction to the more familiar windowed interfaces begun in personal computing by APPLE COMPUTER CORPORATION's MACINTOSH™ and later copied by MICROSOFT CORPORATION's WINDOWS™ operating system. The advancement of user interface systems is seen clearly in all aspects of computing, such as operating system interaction and Internet-related interfaces.
One advancement of user interface technology is seen in U.S. Pat. No. 5,546,528 issued to Johnston. The Johnston patent defined a method for combining additional sets of information into a group of multiple sets within a single window. The groups of information are combined from two-dimensional windows into a single window with each member of the group “stacked” on top of one another. This stacked information, sometimes referred to as z-space information, is presented to the user with visual tabs that indicate which one of the group is active and which others are available for the user's selection. While this type of interface displays indicators of each of the group members, users are not able to see any portion of the information in the group members that are not presently active. This may be a drawback for certain types of implementations that would require the user to go through a series of steps to complete the particular task.
Other well known interface display techniques have been dictated by the limitations of the computers or communication systems used. For example, in Internet applications, users are often required to fill in forms to provide information or other necessary items for interacting with some other system. In fill-in forms, the user fills in a first page which, when completed, is typically communicated to the server. The server then reads the information and sends a new form to the user for additional information. This process may cause the user's interface to refresh after every form page is sent and received. The fill-in process may comprise several pages sent back and forth between the user and the Web server. This process is disjointed and slow because it depends on the latency of the connection and the speed of the Web server. Furthermore, if the user desires to go back to a page, the system typically brings the previous page back, but without the information that the user filled in. Thus, the user would generally need to re-enter all of the information.